Joe Biden's latest attack on farmers

Joe Biden wants to torment farmers with the Waters of the United States, aka WOTUS, rule again. This isn't surprising. It's just terribly disappointing. WOTUS "sought to give unprecedented power to unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., at the expense of farmers, ranchers, small business owners and the American people." Further, "the courts ruled that the 2015 definition was more expansive than the statute and the Constitution allow. WOTUS provided none of the clarity and certainty it promised. Instead, it created confusion and put landowners at risk by giving federal agencies almost unlimited authority to regulate, at their discretion, any low spot where rainwater collects. This included common farm ditches, streams, small ponds, creeks and isolated wetlands found on and near farms and ranches across the nation, no matter how small or seemingly unconnected they may be to true 'navigable waters.'" In the original Clean Water Act, navigable waters were defined as waters that could be regulated by the Interstate Commerce Clause. Anything that overstepped that line isn't eligible for Clean Water Act regulation. The Supreme Court ruling in "County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund" appears to be the most recent ruling on navigable waters:

The Obama Administration attempted to codify many years of WOTUS rulemaking and litigation, including the “significant nexus” test proposed in a solo opinion written by Justice Kennedy in Rapanos v. United States. Accordingly, the 2015 rule defines these protected waters to include not only “traditional navigable waters,” but also wetlands and water features that “significantly affect the chemical, physical and biological integrity” of such waters. As anticipated, the Trump Administration’s replacement rule follows Justice Scalia’s narrower plurality opinion in Rapanos, declaring that WOTUS status extends only to 'relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water.' The 2020 rule thus limits CWA-regulated waters to territorial seas and traditional navigable waters (TNW), perennial and intermittent tributaries contributing surface flow to TNW in a typical year, impoundments of such jurisdictional waters, and adjacent wetlands physically touching jurisdictional waters.

The Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR) instituted by the Trump administration stabilized regulations by taking the federal government's nose out of regulating many of these waters. That doesn't mean that these other waters aren't regulated. It simply means that they aren't regulated by the federal government. According to the SCOTUS ruling in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, the Clean Water Act only applies to "waters that could be regulated by the Interstate Commerce Clause." Joe Biden apparently thinks that he's above the Supreme Court. What a contemptible attitude. 'Scranton Joe' isn't a man of the people. He's part of the Swamp.'